Product Description: Biolinguistics is a highly interdisciplinary field that seeks the rapprochement between linguistics and biology. Linking theoretical linguistics, theoretical biology, genetics, neuroscience and cognitive psychology, this book offers a collection of chapters situating the enterprise conceptually, highlighting both the promises and challenges of the field, and chapters focusing on the challenges and prospects of taking interdisciplinarity seriously...read more

Product Description: Most syntacticians, no matter their theoretical persuasion, agree that features (types or categories) are the most important units of analysis. Within Chomskyan generative grammar, the importance of features has grown steadily and within minimalism, it can be said that everything depends on features...read more

Product Description: The phenomenon of the syntactic 'island' - a clause or structure from which a word cannot be moved - is central to research and study in syntactic theory. This book provides a comprehensive overview of syntactic islands. What are they? How do they arise? Why do they exist? Cedric Boeckx discusses the pros and cons of all the major generative accounts of island effects, and focuses the discussion on whether islands are narrowly syntactic effects, are due to interface factors or are 'merely' performance effects...read more

This volume brings together various strands of research focusing on aspects of the syntax of agreement, and the role that agreement plays in linguistic theory. The essays collected here show how and why agreement has emerged in recent years as the central theoretical construct in minimalism. Although the theoretical context of the volume is minimalist in character, Boeckx formulates formal and substantive universals in the domain of agreement.

Product Description: This Handbook provides a complete assessment of the current achievements and challenges of the Minimalist Program. Established 15 years ago by Noam Chomsky with the aim of making all statements about language as simple and general as possible, linguistic minimalism is now at the centre of efforts to understand how the human language faculty operates in the mind and manifests itself in languages...read more

This textbook explores the ways in which language informs the structure and function of the human mind, offering a point of entry into the fascinating territory of cognitive science. Focusing mainly on syntactic issues, Language in Cognition is a unique contribution to this burgeoning field of study.* Guides undergraduate students through the core questions of linguistics and cognitive science, and provides tools that will help them think about the field in a structured way* Uses the study of language and how language informs the structure and function of the human mind to introduce the major ideas in modern cognitive science, including its history and controversies* Explores questions such as: what does it mean to say that linguistics is part of the cognitive sciences; how do the core properties of language compare with the core properties of other human cognitive abilities such as vision, music, mathematics, and other mental building blocks; and what is the relationship between language and thought?* Includes an indispensable study guide as well as extensive references to encourage further independent study

Understanding Minimalist Syntax introduces the logic of the Minimalist Program by analyzing well-known descriptive generalizations about long-distance dependencies. * An introduction to the logic of the minimalist program - arguably the most important branch of syntax * Proposes a new theory of how long-distance dependencies are formed, with implications for theories of locality, and the minimalist program as a whole * Introduces the logic of the minimalist program by analyzing well-known descriptive generalizations about long-distance dependencies, and asks why they should be true of natural languages * Rich in empirical coverage, which will be welcomed by experts in the field, yet accessible enough for students looking for an introduction to the minimalist program.

Product Description: This important contribution to the Minimalist Program offers a comprehensive theory of locality and new insights into phrase structure and syntactic cartography. It unifies central components of the grammar and increases the symmetry in syntax...read more

Product Description: Boeckx examines the foundations and explains the underlying philosophy of the Minimalist Program for linguistic theory, the most radical version to date of Noam Chomsky's naturalistic approach to language. He exemplifies its methods, considers the significance of its results, and explores its roots and antecedents...read more

Product Description: Agreement plays a central role in modern generative grammar. The present collection brings together contributions from experts on various aspects of agreement systems in the world’s languages in an attempt to formulate formal and substantive universals in this domain...read more

Product Description: The Minimalism Program is many things to many researchers, and there are by now many alternative versions of it. Central to all is the fundamental question: to what extent is the human language faculty an optimal solution to minimal design specifications...read more

Product Description: A Course in Minimalist Syntax is a straightforward and detailed introduction to essential topics in the minimalist program, designed for students and scholars alike. maintains an informal tone for students yet also contains enough fresh material to appeal to specialists provides a natural extension of the classroom approach to linguistics, showing readers a new way of approaching syntax by thinking in minimalist terms written by two prominent syntax researchers, the authors of the classic A Course in GB Syntax, Howard Lasnik and Juan Uriagereka...read more

Product Description: Typological differences in the formation of multiple Wh-questions are well-known. One option is fronting all Wh-phrases to the sentence periphery. The contributions to this volume all explore this option from a number of perspectives...read more

Product Description: The present work provides a detailed analysis of chain formation and locality conditions imposed on it within the Minimalist Program. It does so by analyzing resumptive strategies in great detail. This study claims that resumptive pronouns and their antecedents are first merged as constituents, and are separated via movement (thus forming instances of discontinuous constituents)...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)